E-Safety

E-safety

In school, the South West Grid for Learning (SWGfL) provides a safe and secure online environment for students. This webpage is designed to help parents and carers have a safe and secure online environment at home. We encourage parents and carers together with students to use the information in this section to review e-safety at home.

Advice for parents

In school SWGfL provide a safe and secure online environment for students, but many parents and carers seek advice on how they can help their children to 'Stay Safe' online outside of school.

The list of websites on this page provide comprehensive information about online safety and once parents and carers have a wider knowledge and understanding of the issues they can decide what is right for their family.

The internet is an exciting and fun place for adults and children to use and explore educationally and socially. The challenge for parents, carers and teachers is to make sure our children are aware and understand how to be safe when using the internet and related technologies.

Here are some websites dedicated to particular areas of e-safety:

Free ISP Parental Controls

The UK Safer Internet Centre has been working with BT, Sky, Talk Talk and Virgin Media to produce a new resource for parents and carers: Video guides for the free ISP parental controls. The videos are available on the Safer Internet Centre website and the films can be embedded or downloaded.Video guides for the free ISP parental controls

Digital Parenting

Vodafone has produced an online magazine called 'Digital Parenting' to help parents understand and get involved with their children's digital world. The magazine is very readable, informative and provides advice on a range of ESafety issues, such as location services, sexting, cyberbullying and illegal content.
To order a copy of the magazine, email publications@parentfocus.co.uk or visit their website.

Computer Games and Your Kids - What every parent needs to know

Schools are increasingly reporting the impact video gaming is having on children's education, achievement, behaviour and sleep. The Radio Verulam's programme 'Parents Show' focuses on the need for parental engagement, appropriate boundaries and research about the effects of gaming on behaviour and sleep.
This, along with many other topics, is available as a podcast - Click here

Home Halo

Home Halo piggybacks on your home Wifi so you can keep your kids safe online, on every device they use. Whether you are at home or at work, Home Halo lets you manage your children’s internet from the palm of your hand. This is a subscription service which provides a lot of services to help you manage the amount of time your children spend online and what sites they are accessing. You can set your own time boundaries for Wifi access and enable or disable particular websites. Please see the website for more information. https://www.homehalo.net/abouthomehalo

OYOTY: the online safety assistant for your children that lives in their smartphone

Empowering children to be safer online

Online child safety solutions have long been synonymous with parental control, monitoring and restrictions. Apart from leaving children out of the learning process and promoting ‘underground’ behaviors such solutions are largely ineffective and even counter-productive as per the latest research from the London School of Economics. With proliferation of tablets and smartphones among very young children and growing use of online applications- it becomes ever more important to involve the children in managing their online safety.

OYOTY is a personal robotic assistant for young children online which helps them be more aware, secure and private online and to engage positively with digital media. Based on a deep learning engine, OTOTY delivers contextual education and help to children through an advanced user interface (chat-bot).

Childline has launched a website aimed at children under 12 which provides age appropriate content on topics including bullying, family, friends, feelings, school, abuse and staying safe. It also includes games and therapeutic tools for young visitors to play and express how they are feeling.
It will be promoted through the NSPCC's Speak out Stay safe programme